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Former Bush Donors Now Giving to Obama

Friday 30 May 2008

by: Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers

"Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the daughter of the late GOP President Richard Nixon and wife of late GOP President Dwight Eisenhower's grandson, has made donations to the Obama campaign."

Washington - Beverly Fanning is among the campaign donors who'll be joining President Bush at a gala at Washington's Ford's Theater Sunday night, but she says that won't dissuade her from her current passion: volunteering for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

She isn't the only convert. A McClatchy computer analysis, incomplete due to the difficulty matching data from various campaign finance reports, found that hundreds of people who gave at least $200 to Bush's 2004 campaign have donated to Obama.

Among them are Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the daughter of the late GOP President Richard Nixon and wife of late GOP President Dwight Eisenhower's grandson; Connie Ballmer, the wife of Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer; Ritchie Scaife, the estranged wife of conservative tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife and boxing promoter Don King.

Many of the donors are likely "moderate Republicans or independents who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country now and are looking for change," said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Maine who specializes in campaign finance.

"There is a large block of Republicans, particularly economic conservatives, who just feel that the Republican Party in Washington completely let them down" by failing to control spending and address other problems, Corrado said. "The Republicans have really given these donors no reason to give."

Lawyer Allen Larson of Yarmouthport, Mass., a political independent, contributed $2,000 to Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, but said he gave Obama the maximum $2,300 in hopes he can use his "unique skills" to rebuild fractured foreign alliances.

Larson said he's "not anti-Iraq war," but he said that Bush promised to bring people together when he ran for president and has failed to do so, while Obama has demonstrated in his campaign "that he has the ability to connect in ways that no other candidate can."

While they represent a tiny slice of Bush's 2004 donors, he said, a shift of longtime Republicans committed enough to write checks reflects "a real strain" in the GOP.

Detroit attorney Michael Lavoie, a moderate Republican who backed Bush in 2000 and 2004 with $3,000, said he donated to a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time this year because Obama offers "the greatest hope for healing divisions" at home and abroad.

Calls to more than a dozen of the Bush-turned-Obama backers suggest there are multiple motives for their shifts.

Lavoie, 55, of Birmingham, Mich., said he's been "very disappointed in George Bush's policy with the Iraq war and very disappointed with his economic policies that added $3 trillion to the national debt."

Remembering the horrors of Vietnam, he expressed dismay that "the Republican party engages in the spin, the propaganda, the selling of the war."

Katherine Merck, 84, of Lexington, Mass., preferred not to recall her donations of $2,000 to Bush in 1999 and $2,000 in 2004.

"I just can't get over it that my name is in there for sending money to that miserable president," she said. "I think Obama is something we all need badly, really badly. I think that people need to grow up more and learn how to get on in the world without resorting to killing people. I'm talking about the war in Iraq."

Beverly Fanning said she thinks Bush has been "great," but like several others, she said she was taken with Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and continued to follow him after he won a U.S. Senate seat and declared his presidential candidacy.

"Am I all the way liberal?" Beverly Fanning asked. "I think I'm actually a conservative liberal.... It's not that I'm against McCain. It's just that Barack is my choice."

Worried about the loss of manufacturing jobs to Third World countries, she said, she began volunteering early this year for Obama, who says he'd consider amending trade pacts to protect those jobs.

The 48-year-old mother of two has given Obama more than a dozen donations, hitting the maximum $2,300 for the primaries. She's even knocked on the doors of 300 homes in Orangeburg, S.C. and in the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights.

Fanning said that her husband Tom, the chief operating officer of the Southern Co., a major electric utility, is a solid Republican who backs McCain for president but gave $1,000 to Obama in February.

She said that Obama has "a lot of white support," but she blanched during a recent visit to her hometown of Bristol, Tenn., when someone told her a racist joke.

"I told him, 'I have been volunteering for Barack Obama for five months,' " she said. "I thought the guy was gonna faint."

Some converts declined to give any hint of their reasons.

"I consider that to be a private matter," said Jeffrey Leiden, a Glencoe, Ill., cardiologist who's a former president of Abbott Laboratories' pharmaceutical products group.

Corrado said he thinks some of the ex-Bush donors have given to Obama to hurt Hillary Clinton - a suspicion confirmed by Henry Corey, 86, of Bronxville, N.Y., a longtime GOP donor.

He said he gave Obama $250 because, "frankly, I wanted to be sure that someone nudged Hillary Clinton aside. I think she'd be a disaster."

Chris Adams and Tish Wells contributed to this article.

News
Hillary Clinton's Aides Prepare to Concede

Monday 02 June 2008

by: Toby Harnden, The Telegraph UK

Hillary Clinton's victory in Puerto Rico was overwhelming, but the turnout was much lower than expected.

Senior advisers to Senator Hillary Clinton have prepared the ground for her to abandon her 2008 presidential ambitions within days and not dispute the Democratic nomination all the way to the party convention in August.

Although she won by a wide margin over Barack Obama in yesterday's Puerto Rico primary - with 85 per cent of the vote in, she was leading by 36 percentage points - the former First Lady made no mention in her victory speech of taking her fight beyond this week.

Instead, she made a final appeal to some 178 uncommitted "super-delegates" - party officials whose convention votes are not tied to the primaries - that she would be the stronger general election candidate against John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

"The decision will fall on those leaders in our party empowered by the rules to vote in the Democratic convention," she said in San Juan. "I do not envy you the decision you must make." She needs some 90 per cent of the 178 to back her, which is almost certainly a vain hope.

Mrs Clinton's Puerto Rico win was overwhelming but the turnout was much lower than expected, damaging her hopes of amassing a clear and potentially highly symbolic lead in the overall popular vote. She nevertheless stated that she was winning the popular vote - a dubious assertion that relies on some creative mathematics.

Mr Obama is expected to be able to declare himself the party's candidate against John McCain as early as Tuesday, when South Dakota and Montana become the final states to hold their primaries or failing that within the 48 hours after.

Just after the Montana polls close, Mr Obama, who could be accompanied by senior Democratic party figures, is to hold a huge rally in St Paul, Minnesota at the venue where John McCain is due to accept the Republican nomination in September.

Mr Obama's aides were working furiously yesterday to amass the two dozen or so "super-delegates" - party officials whose convention votes are not tied to the primaries - he would need to ensure that the South Dakota and Montana results give him a majority.

Terry McAuliffe, Mrs Clinton's campaign chairman, told ABC News: "We'll see where we are when we finish up Tuesday. Then super-delegates will begin to move. But we're going to make our argument right up until someone has that number."

Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said the nomination would be decided this week: "We don't want to go to the convention, have a big fight at the convention, and lose the presidency."

A dispute over whether and how to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida was resolved on Saturday by giving each delegate only half a vote as a penalty for those states defying the party by holding early primaries.

The Clinton camp was unhappy with the decision, which raised the number of delegates needed for victory from 2,025 to 2,118, but showed little appetite to challenge.

According to the non-aligned RealClearPolitics website, Mr Obama has 2,051 delegates to Mrs Clinton's 1,876. There were 55 delegates at stake in Puerto Rico, which voted yesterday and 31 will be at stake in South Dakota and Montana.

Mrs Clinton was expected to win in Puerto Rico while Mr Obama appears to have clear leads in the last two states. If the two candidates split the delegates, that would leave Mr Obama needing just 24 of the remaining 178 undecided super-delegates for outright victory.

Even Harold Ickes, Mrs Clinton's fearsomely combative senior adviser, appeared to be close to conceding defeat.

When asked on NBC television whether the former First Lady would congratulate Mr Obama on Tuesday, he responded: "We expect to get the nomination and we're making the case."

Last week, Mrs Clinton said she expected undecided super-delegates to make up their mind quickly after Tuesday. Her rapidly fading hopes rested on her being able to persuade 90 per cent of them to overturn Mr Obama's delegate lead because of her contention that she would be the stronger candidate against Mr McCain.

Mr Obama indicated on Saturday night that he thought Mrs Clinton, in consultation with her husband Bill, would concede this week so that the party could unite against Mr McCain.

"I think that Senator Clinton and former President Clinton love this country," he said.

"They love the Democratic Party. I think they deeply believe that Democrats need to win in November. And so I trust that they're going to do the right thing."

Friends,

I'm about to take the stage in St. Paul and announce that we have won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

It's been a long journey, and we should all pause to thank Hillary Clinton, who made history in this campaign. Our party and our country are better off because of her.

I want to make sure you understand what's ahead of us. Earlier tonight, John McCain outlined a vision of America that's very different from ours -- a vision that continues the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.

But this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past and bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It's going to take hard work, but thanks to you and millions of other donors and volunteers, no one has ever been more prepared for such a challenge.

Thank you for everything you've done to get us here. Let's keep making history.

Barack